The following is one of the dumbest phrases ever uttered in the English language:
“Failure is not an option.”
Strike that infantilizing slogan from your mind right now! Quoth the Curmudgeon:
Failure is always an option.
Failure is a necessary step on the path to accomplishment. While I’m at it; lets drop a few more truth bombs. Someday you’re going to die, the Easter Bunny doesn’t shit chocolate eggs, and governments cannot tax a nation into prosperity. It’s wrongthink to type the truth in 2020, but it was once “common sense”.
It’s said the phrase was associated with the Apollo missions. I doubted it; because it’s bullshit. Smart, serious, hard working people intent on a true achievement (like spaceflight!) don’t bluff. Politicians and college professors swim in bullshit, but people of real accomplishment don’t have that luxury.
Failure is always an option. Deep at heart we know this. If you try to bluff reality, you deserve what you get. This is why politicans suck at almost everything. They make a living based on talking but not doing. They get their hands on levers of power that exceed their accomplishment and invariably drive things into the ditch.
Wikipedia indicates the phrase came from scriptwriting for the 1995 movie Apollo 13. That sounds right to me. It’s the husk of a greater, deeper, and more subtle thought process. Engineer says smart thing. Hollywood hack translates it into dumb thing that sounds heroic. Not recognizing true heroism, people repeat dumb thing.
Why am I telling you this? Because I risk failure all the time. Maybe you do to? We were not put on this earth to endlessly repeat shit we already know. (The Movie Groundhog day was not about how fun it was to be stuck in time!)
Every challenge undertaken is an opportunity to faceplant. Identify something you don’t know how to do… then do it. It’s a difficult process. It can get expensive.
Sometimes people laugh at my struggles. Sometimes they do this while chained to the exact geometric center of their comfort zone.
Such endeavors are out of synch with social media. When people post on FaceGram or InstaBook they only show their successes… and often shallow ones at that. “I’m in Cancun. Here’s a photo of me standing on the beach. I sat like a sack of potatoes in a jet flown by an accomplished, skilled pilot. Here’s a photo of my food. It was made by a really awesome cook, who’s not in the photo.”
I keep many endeavors to myself. Why publicly document every last thing at which I suck? OK, if it’s a good story with a fun punchline that’s different. I’d post my own death by woodchipper for a laugh! But during the learning process I generally only post after I’ve climbed the mountain du jour… that’s my right.
However, it’s Christmas and we need a diversion. We just had a full year of self imposed misery… followed by the election of mystery. The underlying things that led to 2020 didn’t just magically resolve; so they will continue. Who can face another year of madness?
We need dreams… challenging yet attainable ones. How better to offer a light in the darkness?
But first… another digression!
A couple years ago I wrote about my tiny little sailboat. The story is in the “Walkabout” page; header bar, far left, “Spring 2019”. If you’re looking for a diversion, pour a cup of coffee and enjoy the trip. (I took that trip back in the before times when Americans were free. In long ago ancient 2019, hiding from the world in your house was a sign of mental illness. Now it’s mandated by various governors. Oh how those primitive people back then differed from us now!)
Here’s a picture of me camped on a beach with my little boat. (Can you see me? I’m the guy holding the camera.)
It’s a good memory. I share it with you.
I built that boat. Every fucking inch of it. It works! It floats and it’s properly balanced. It goes where my inexperienced sailing skills point it. It handles waters greater than what I expected from a craft that small; it punches above it’s weight class.
It was a time of quiet hoy. I camped in that tent, drank beer by the fire, watched the stars at night, and sailed alone in the day. I didn’t drown. The boat didn’t sink. Predictions of my demise went unfulfilled.
Everyone who told me to give up and buy(!) a fiberglass payment plan was far away. There were many who’d told me to quit but they were irrelevant as I drifted on the waves. I sailed the boat I made. I was Tom Sawyer. I was a 12 year old pirate. I was Captain Cook on exploration. I was at peace.
A crude boat of plywood and sailcloth came with fulfilment beyond what many folks will ever experience.
I felt happy. Because I’d earned it..
What’s not obvious from the photo is that the whole thing started out badly. I had three successive failures. This was my fourth attempt.
- I’d bought “study plans” for a Chesapeake Light Craft Northeaster Dory. I read every word but grokked the build exceeded my ability. (I’ve since “leveled up” and could do it.)
- I bought a traditionally built “double ender”. It was cheap and “in need of TLC”. I burned a lot of time and money to get it in the water. Alas, it exceeds my modest sailing skills like a tiger exceeds a mouse.
- I bought a little 14′ sailing dory. It was also cheap and in need of repair. My inadequate repairs didn’t work out. It’s carefully stored… on my lawn.
Fail once, fail twice, fail a third time, and then announce to Mrs. Curmudgeon:
“Fuck it. I’m going to try again. This time from scratch.”
She understood. She smiled and watched me charge off to tilt at windmills… again.
The fourth attempt worked. The little bugger sailed like a boss. I felt like a goddamn God!
I didn’t blog about my failures as I experienced them. I only posted the boat after I got the sails up. In fact, I only put the little boat online to encourage others.
If you’re thinking of building a boat… do it. Start now!
Recently I started another “project”. It is not a boat. Now that I have some basic boatwright skills, that flame has faded.
The new project requires skills I don’t have. I’m a shitty mechanic, lousy welder, and crappy fabricator. Yet, I’m trying to build a thing for which I have no formal plans. I’ve never physically encountered an example of the thing I’m making. I’ve never operated one. I only know it can be done… by people with more skill than me.
I don’t know if I’ll succeed or fail. That’s the point.
Normally I’d struggle in secrecy. Posting neither my failures nor my successes. That’s how I roll… and also who wants to look like a fool on their own damn blog?
But it’s Christmas and we all need to spur the imagination. So here’s a tiny hint.
It’s got a Hemi:
Wish me luck!
Merry Christmas,
A.C.
I was telling my wife today that I felt bad for you. This whole dumpster fire of a year has been hard even on us eternal optimists. I should have known better. Like you I’ve decided all this noise is just not that important. The solstice with the Christmas star is beautiful. The noise makers can’t make me miserable. Like you, I have things to do, learn and hopefully master. I will enjoy it all. I’m a viking and this is my world too. Thank you for being one of the bright lights.
Thanks for noticing. I’d be lying if I said 2020 politics hadn’t affected me but I try t9 keep it at bay. When I think about it the only thing that really mattered was properly caring for my old dog the first few months of the year. The rest is just assholes flinging poo and me dodging.
With luck… a whole lotta luck… there will be more photos of that motor in a happy light.
Go man go!
Be aware my mechanical skills are like a chimpanzee compared to yours. It’ll be a big deal to me if this thing doesn’t implode when I fabricate it. Stay tuned.
But implosions can be VERY entertaining to those not directly involved therein…
Just sayin’…
Just add an 8′ I-beam, hydraulic pump and reservoir, shaft coupler, 36″x2″ hydraulic ram, wrist-pin, assorted chunks of flat-bar scrap, a wedge, three-position solenoid with handle, an axle with wheels, a few chunks of pipe or rods, some assorted nuts-n-bolts and 10 pounds of welding sticks, and you have a way to split those knotty, twisted chunks of wood and butt-offs!
Pro-tip: wait until the frame is complete before locating the axle to figure out the proper balance.
Or just build a gasifier to run whatever you hook the engine to…
You need to size the hydraulics properly to get any speed out of them. Pop built one that ran off the tractor’s PTO and that thing split wood faster than you could think about it! When I rented one of the gas powered things… it was so slow, I would have been better off with the axe.
I bought a cheap-o electric log splitter that isn’t bad for my recreational firewood needs. Were it me, I’d put that beautiful engine to work on something else…
If I may be so bold as to mince words with our esteemed blog host, I might say that if failure is not an option – then you had better be prepared to fail and later to recover.
Merry Christmas, Curmudgeon!!!
I’ve got the only highway speed woodsplitter I’ve seen. Suspension, axle, turn signals, the works. Check out “How To Nearly Destroy A Woodsplitter And Then Rebuild It To A Higher Level Of Awesome” in Notable Sagas.
In keeping with the topic. My super-woodsplitter came about because of a “failure”. I wound up blowing the cheap OEM tire to smithereens on a late night highway run and decided to “level up” after that fiasco.
Thanks, I knew that not.
My only experiences with splitters, including my current one, are “home-builts”, and they’ve all been massive beasts that use snowblower engines, 5 hp minimum.
Yooper splitters, strong enough to pop gnarly Yellow Birch and maple, with a flat pusher and stationary wedge. Usually beefier than W8x28 beam, full-size tires, and a 6″ x 24″ cylinder scavenged from something-or-another.
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product. 😉
“Those who never fail have never tried”
I dunno who said that, but they are correct.
Great post. Like you, I have a long list of failures. But I LEARN from each one and go forward.
Guys, the hint was that he is building something that he has never encountered before. That rules out log splitters, sawmills and anything that runs over ground or water with wheels and is powered.
Now AC has me stewing as to what it might be.
Then again AC, if you ever run into a brick wall with it, do ask on your blog.
I bring certain skills, as do others that lurk here. Wickipedia’s got nothing on us in aggregate, brother from another mother.
My father was a NASA engineer who worked on some big projects (Viking and Voyager missions), and he uttered the phrase “Failure is not an option” pretty frequently, and not only at work. I think it was his way of providing motivation to himself and his team not to give up when things weren’t going well. After all, giving up could be considered the biggest failure of all. He also kept a photograph of a rocket exploding on the launch pad on a prominent place on his desk.
Thank you for your posts.
You’re welcome. Thanks for noticing them.
You build something and it doesn’t work… you try again, still no joy? You try again until you get it right. It’s called learning, you DID learn to build a sailboat! Now you have one and great pictures of it in use!
It’s the same with most anything… you mentioned welding, you just need more practice!
Merry Christmas.
Good for you! Sometimes a small and simple boat is a lot more fun than big and complicated. I started as a kid with a skin over frame kayak and worked my way up to a couple of big multihulls and commercial fishing boats. Now my wife and I build kayaks and we think it’s more fun.
Also a small boat can make a fun adventure without needing so much space. I sailed that little boat across a lake about 7 miles long. I was not quite a mile from shore and maybe three miles from my destination when I thought “man, it feels like I’m in the Pacific…because this boat is so little”. That was a great sail.
I sailed one of the multihulls from Hawaii to San Francisco, and there were plenty of times on that trip I wished I stayed with a smaller boat inshore.
That’s a hell of a trip!
Check out the i550 sport boat. That’s the next one I want to build.
What’s up with your off road motorcycle stories?
The off road motorcycle situation fell prey to 2020. I had all sorts of grand plans to go here and there and ride like a maniac on multiple day desert or forest campouts. After a few minor excursions I realized 2020 was too much of a shitshow to push against the current. The hotels were hassles and the restaurants worse and simply getting around became a PITA. I also kept thinking the Canadian border would open so I could go to some of my favorite places but that didn’t happen. I decided traveling in panicked America just served to remind me how subservient my people had become. The people are fine but every bureaucracy and organization is in a race to shoot themselves in the foot and the people are cowed. They’re always peeking around corners and watching their back; there’s always a Karen out to get them. After a year of this crap we’re pretty close to angry oppressed people, lazy illiterate kids watching TV, and Amazon shopping. It’s really sad.
I did a few smaller runs and the bike is a blast. In that, I had plenty of fun, but nothing particularly bloggable. Bloggable off road bike adventures had too much friction in the new Soviet world of masked peasants. I’ll try again in 2021. Sorry.
I love it! And, I live it. I once (when I lived in Alaska) had a snowblower that hooked to my John Deere riding lawnmower. Only problem? No tire chains.
So, I built them myself. It was stupid, I know. But after figuring out six ways that chains gently just wrap themselves around the axle, I finally figured out how to make a set that worked.
Ta-da!
Homemade tire chains? Fabulous!
What you said. Failure is always an option. It’s what you do with Failure that separates the men from the completely useless fucktards.
Just look at SpaceX. They fail bigly all the time. And the crow about it. There’s even a company-produced video of all the landing failures, from big fracking explosions to missing the spot to falling over to running out of fuel.
Failure is always an option. Anyone who’s ever owned a Ford should know that.
Planned failure should also be an option. Don’t build for failure, build for success. But plan for how failures can occur.
Good luck on your new airplane/hyperloop project. Can’t wait to find out what it actually is.
I’ve watched a lot of build project videos where the guy starts welding looking like an epileptic welder having a complete spaz attack and after lots of practice puts out welds as nice as a pro. You have to learn somewhere.
I remember when NASA had it’s first Space Shuttle disaster and shut down for years. I was like “these people don’t have the balls to go to space”. I was right. 40+ years after the last man walked on the moon they’re clearly never going to get back. Virtually all recent progress came when they decided to outsource balls to the private sector. NASA’s scientists didn’t get dumber but the bureaucracy’s main skill now is cutting checks.
I presume I’ll pick up welding eventually. I’ve done a little… but never had time to practice.
It occurs to me, from time to time, that folks with a built-in “I don’t know how to do that” lead a simpler, less troublesome life.
I don’t know what that is like.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
In a perfect world, folks with a built in “I don’t know how to do that” would live in a society created by people who “don’t know how to do that”. Part of Ayn Rand’s seething rage was watching useless shitheads put hard workers to the harness.
But that’s a topic for another time. Right now it’s time to enjoy Christmas. Merry Christmas to you too.
Looking forward to hear more success sagas from my favourite Versatile Geezer…..both the constructive and the conclusive kinds.
How about a Goose Cargo Outrigger, a modular addon that allows your boat to carry the bike, and doubles as the frame for a towing trailer for the boat…make it, patent it and keep the moulah. You could even motorise it, petrol-electric…
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Wrong season for testing aquatic transport. All the water is hard and crumbly. 🙂
Merry Christmas.
Maxim 70: Failure is not an option – it is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do. Schlock Mercenary
Nice!
I included a URL to Ovalkwiki, the official Schlock Mercenary wiki, where you can find the 70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries, but apparently the commenting system scrubbed it, so if you are curious, you’ll have to DuckDuckGo it yourself.
Will do. I’ve read plenty of Schlock Mercenary too.
Another thing, training a dog that hates to be wrong forces me to understand how to get her to move on from a “failure”.
And then I learn that this is why I have been stuck in some places for so many years.
For surely, the more a person fails, the better that person is at recognizing an untenable condition/position/situation developing, the quicker that person is to move on to another opportunity.